2 
The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare's Time. 
theless, in our more gross performances, that we employ all our faculties, 
and apply the utmost power of our souls; why do we not conclude the 
same of them ? Why should we attribute to I know not what natural 
and servile inclination the works that excel all we can do by nature 
and art? Wherein, before we are aware, we give them a mighty 
advantage over us, in making nature, with a maternal sweetness, to 
accompany and lead them, as it were, by the hand to all the actions 
and commodities of their life, whilst she leaves us to chance and 
fortune, and to seek out, by art, the things that are necessary to our 
conservation, at the same time denying us the means of being able, by 
any instruction or contention of understanding, to arrive at the natural 
sufficiency of beasts; so that their brutish stupidity surpasses, in all 
conveniences, all that our divine intelligence can do. Eeally, at this 
rate, we might with great reason call her an unjust step-mother; but 
it is nothing so, our polity is not so irregular and deform’d. Nature 
has been generally kind to all her creatures, and there is not one she 
has not amply furnished with all means necessary for the conservation 
of his being.” 
A little further on, he writes— 
“ All this I have said to prove the resemblance there is in human 
things, and to bring us back and joyn us to the crowd. We are 
neither above nor below the rest. All that is under heaven (says the 
wise man) runs one law, and one fortune.” 
The Rev. J. Kirkman has recently shown, in an essay 
written for the New Shakspere Society, how, in almost 
every one of Shakspeare’s plays, the tone of the drama is 
reflected by the animal life introduced. In Midsummer 
Night's Dream — 
“ the season and atmosphere of exuberant life, joy, and fun, show almost 
all creatures but serpents under their genial light. There is a very 
delight even in naming things, because of their song, their beauty, 
their innocent, or quaint, or industrious ways. It is exactly the 
opposite condition of things that rules in King Lear. Here the darker 
purpose of the play, which throws its shadow over human nature, 
shrouds in its gloom animal nature as well. A greater number of 
animals are mentioned in King Lear than in any other play, and with 
scarcely an exception the references are unfavourable. Their cruelty, 
treachery, and deceit are dwelt upon, and withal the terrible fact of the 
similar villainy of man. We have to ask,” Mr. Kirkman continues, 
“ what beautiful or sad law was it that was like the igneous rock ever 
